I should probably expand on this. Neoliberals have a hard time driving voter turnout because it’s the same people who vote for them who also decided that maybe something more conservative would be better, as the neoliberal agenda has spent 30 years not living up to its promises.
But progressive socialist liberalism is ALSO about change, and is driven by people who are passionate about placing that change in the hands of regular people.
So it can absorb some of the people who voted for Republicans because they weren’t neoliberal, and also rouse the large body of non voters to actually get out and vote. That’s a much larger voting bloc than the neoliberals have available; it’s just a much poorer one.
Conservative populists and neoliberals like to trot out “left” vs “right” to make it seem like politics is on a single line and you can trend more one way or the other. But in reality, often voting for change means voting for the change that seems most achievable, and there’s no left vs right about that.
I should probably expand on this. Neoliberals have a hard time driving voter turnout because it’s the same people who vote for them who also decided that maybe something more conservative would be better, as the neoliberal agenda has spent 30 years not living up to its promises.
But progressive socialist liberalism is ALSO about change, and is driven by people who are passionate about placing that change in the hands of regular people.
So it can absorb some of the people who voted for Republicans because they weren’t neoliberal, and also rouse the large body of non voters to actually get out and vote. That’s a much larger voting bloc than the neoliberals have available; it’s just a much poorer one.
Conservative populists and neoliberals like to trot out “left” vs “right” to make it seem like politics is on a single line and you can trend more one way or the other. But in reality, often voting for change means voting for the change that seems most achievable, and there’s no left vs right about that.